Wiggins expands lead; Leg. races tighter

With a big boost from King County, Bainbridge attorney Charlie Wiggins expanded his lead over Washington State Supreme Court Justice Richard Sanders as multiple counties reported vote totals late on Wednesday afternoon.

Wiggins’ lead went down during the day as pro-Sanders counties reported. By the tine Grant County reported at 4:17 p.m., a county going nearly two-to-one for the incumbent, Sanders trailed by just 1,891 votes.

The totals from King County rang up at 4:24 p.m., and more than doubled Wiggins’ lead to 4,966 votes. Returns from Kitsap and Thurston Counties, favoring Wiggins, pushed the margin over 5,000, but a late Spokane County count favoring Sanders took Wiggins’ advantage back below 5,000.

Wiggins has practiced law in Kitsap County for more than three decades, and chaired bar panels on judicial ethics. He served briefly as an appointed member of the State Court of Appeals, but lost his bid for a full term.

Two King County legislative races narrowed as well, although, as noted by Andrew Villeneuve of the Northwest Progressive Institute, “The county is running out of votes.” (The county still has more than 60,000 ballots to report.)

In the 41st District, appointed Democratic State Sen. Randy Gordon trails Republican challenger Steve Litzow by just 336 votes: Litzow was well ahead on election night. Now, he has 50.24 percent to 49.76 percent for Gordon in the state’s tightest Senate contest.

The 30th District, in South King County, is almost as tight.

Republican Katrina Asay is holding onto a 418-vote advantage over Democrat Carol Gregory in another race that has narrowed.

The 1st District, which straddles the King-Snohomish County line, has seen another tight race. Democrat Luis Moscoso has pulled out to an 843-vote lead over Tea Party-based Republican Heidi Munson.

Sanders seemed on his way to re-election, despite a record of controversies and an admonishment from the state’s judicial conduct commission. Late in the race, however, Sanders’ remarks about the percentage of African-Americans in the state’s jails – and an article in The Stranger about his background and private life – cut into his King County support.

The 15-year incumbent was getting only 41 percent of the vote in Washington’s most populous county, twenty points below Sanders’ showing when he was last reelected.